French Pressed

“Butter, give me butter, always butter?” Matt translated.

“Exactly,” Joy said. “A lot of fine cooking can be done without butter, but nothing from the great syllabus of French classics—and nouvelle cuisine is no different. Okay, Dad, let’s move on, shall we?”

Matt’s eyebrow rose at his daughter’s pedantic tone. I laughed into my coffee cup.

Joy checked both pans. “Now that the butter is just warm enough to spread, but not hot enough to foam, crackle, or spit, I take two eggs—” She displayed the tiny white orbs to us in a fair imitation of a magician presenting his beautiful, delicate doves. “I crack each one into its own saucer. Then I slide the egg carefully into its own buttery pan.”

I watched as she deftly slipped the eggs into the melting butter, first one, and then the other. She adjusted the flame until it was barely more than a blue glow under each pan.

“At this low temperature I slowly cook the egg until the white barely turns creamy, and the yolk heats up but doesn’t solidify.”

With a knife, Joy plopped another lump of butter into the sauté pan, turned on the gas. “In a separate pan I melt more butter.”

Matt glanced at me and whispered, “When will these eggs be done? Next Friday?”

“I heard that, Dad!” Joy snatched the china from the hot bath, dried each plate. Then she glanced into the pan. “Perfect,” she announced. “Now I slip the egg onto a slightly heated serving plate and pour the fresh, warm butter over it. Then a touch of ground sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.”

Joy turned to face us, a plate in each hand. “Voilà! The perfect egg.”

She set the plates down in front of us, handed me a fork. I touched the yolk with the utensil, and then tasted it. It was sweet, like butter, and silky, too. I’d never tasted an egg quite like it. I took a bit of the white. It was creamy and delicate.

“Wonderful,” I cooed.

“Absolutely amazing!” Matt declared. “Delicate and buttery and perfectly seasoned.”

“So I guess Chef Keitel must have been impressed,” I said.

“Well, I got the job,” she replied with a shrug.

“How about Vinny?” I asked. “Was he given the same challenge?”

Joy’s face fell. She nodded silently. “Vinny was so talented. Tommy told me his eggs were amazing, even better than mine.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Matt said, licking his fork.

“Vinny didn’t even let his egg get near a pan. He separated the white from the yolk, cooked them both in buttered saucers set over boiling water, then reunited them at the moment of cooked perfection. He used sea salt for seasoning—and white pepper so no dark spots would spoil the look of the finished dish.” Joy looked away. “Vinny was such a great cook…and he was a really good friend to me…I can’t believe how I found him last night, lying there that way…in all that blood…” She wiped at a tear with the neckline of her T-shirt. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I took a fortifying sip of coffee and then carefully said, “Joy, I’d like to ask you a little more about all that. About what happened last night.”

She shook her head. Turning, she started cleaning up the pans. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s over now and—”

“No, Joy,” I told her firmly. “Honey, listen to me. This isn’t over. Whoever killed Vinny is still out there. You have to talk about it, help us understand, so we can help find whoever hurt him.”

“Why? Why can’t you just let the police handle it? Why can’t you—”

“Butt out,” I interrupted. “That’s not an option. Not anymore. Not with Lieutenant Salinas on the case. I have no doubt he still suspects you of something, Joy—if not hurting Vinny, then maybe knowing something about who did or helping to cover it up.”

“But that’s crazy! Don’t you think so, Dad?” Face flushed, Joy stopped trying to clean up. She looked to her father. To my surprise, Matt was shaking his head in agreement—with me!

“Your mother’s right, Joy. You have to tell us whatever you know. Everything, you understand? Even if you think it’s something we won’t like hearing. We’re your parents, and we love you. If you can’t trust us, who can you trust?”

Joy frowned. She was quiet a long moment. Finally, she exhaled and nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.

Matt glanced at me. His expression had gone from firm and parental to almost helpless. He’d gotten Joy to cooperate, but he clearly had no idea what to ask her next.

That’s okay, I thought, because I do.

Nine

“Joy,” I began, after clearing my throat. “Tell us exactly why you went over to Vinny Buccelli’s apartment in the middle of the night. I’m still a little fuzzy on the details…”

My daughter folded her arms and leaned her back against the granite sink. “If you want the whole story, then I’ve got to start at the beginning.”

“Fine.” I glanced at Matt. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Well, Mom, after you and Grandma left the restaurant last night, I talked to Tommy. I told him about Brigitte and all the trouble she’s been causing. But it seemed to me he was barely listening. Didn’t say a word, you know? Then I thought maybe he’d want to go out with me after work; we did that a lot when we first started seeing each other. But Tommy just blew me off.”

Joy scowled and looked away, obviously still upset by his treatment. “He was doing something with his friend Nick, or so he said. He promised we’d have ‘a talk’ tomorrow, which is today, I guess.”

A talk, I repeated to myself, feeling a buoyant lift of hope. When one lover told another they needed to have “a talk,” it usually meant a talk about breaking up. I could only hope Keitel was about to do just that with my daughter.

“Were you upset with Tommy?” I asked Joy. “Was that why you went to see Vinny?”

“I was upset, yeah. But that’s not why I went to Queens. I went because Vinny left me a cell phone message asking me to come over and see him after work.”

Matt spoke up. “You played that phone message for Lieutenant Salinas, right?”

Joy nodded. “He impounded my cell phone, too. ‘Evidence,’ he claimed. He gave me a voucher, told me I’d get it back in a few weeks.”

“What did the message say?” I asked. “Try to remember exactly.”

Joy stared at the ceiling. “Well, Vinny sounded kind of weird. Mysterious, you know? I mentioned that he called in sick yesterday, right?”

I nodded.

“That was weird, right there. For Vinny, going to work at Solange was like a kid going to Disneyland. He totally loved it—”

“And the message?” I interrupted.

“Vinny said he needed to talk to me. He said he wasn’t really sick, but that he couldn’t come back to work until we spoke. I knew he was on prep today, which meant he’d miss two days if we didn’t talk. So I knew whatever he had to say was really important.”

“And he left this message when?” I asked.

“Around nine thirty. Tommy won’t allow the staff to use cell phones during service, so I didn’t retrieve the message until after midnight. I was already changed into my clothes to go home.”

“Who else was in the kitchen when you were getting ready to leave?”

“Tommy and his friend Nick were there…and Ramon was finishing the cleaning with Juan, the dishwasher.”

“No other cooks were hanging around?”

“No. Everyone was gone by then: the sauté chef, Henry Tso; the pastry chef, Janelle Babcock; everyone. The waiters were gone, too.”